


oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued

by Princex_N



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Anger, Autism, Autistic Hawkeye, Bullying, Canon Compliant, Episode: s09e16 Bless You Hawkeye, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, Self-Acceptance, Self-Reflection, Team as Family, internalized ableism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:08:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22295323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: Hawkeye Pierce is seven years old, and he doesn't know what he's supposed to do.-Hawkeye Pierce is nearly thirty years old, and he can't fucking stand the knowing.
Relationships: Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce & Everyone
Comments: 4
Kudos: 63





	oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued

**Author's Note:**

> title is from one of richard siken's poems

Hawkeye Pierce is seven years old, and he doesn't know what he's supposed to do. 

He's soaked, and cold, and scared out of his mind, and so angry that he feels like he's still under the water, drowning under the oppressive weight of it all. Billy is still laughing, and Hawkeye doesn't know what to do. 

He _knows_ that he's different. He's always known, because he has eyes and he can see for himself, and he has ears and people love to tell him. Hawkeye knows that it's weird the way he can't keep the energy inside of him when he gets excited - the way his body wiggles and moves and twists is _weird_ , he knows. He knows that it's weird that he only started talking a few years ago, that it's weird how it still sometimes feels like he just learned when he tries, the words getting stuck in his head or stuttering in his mouth. He knows that the way he eats is weird, the constant exploration and inspection and the 'picky eating'. He knows it's weird for 'a kid his age' to be reading his father's medical textbooks, that it's weird that it's all he ever wants to talk about, he _knows_. 

It's just that there's not really anything he can do about it. 

There's only so much that he can do, and none of it seems to make any difference. His parents try to understand, and sometimes teachers will too until they get tired of it, and the other kids ignore him or laugh at him or repeat the same comments that their parents do, and Hawkeye Pierce is always alone, and that's how it always works out. 

But Billy is usually different. He treats Hawkeye like any other kid, and sometimes he laughs when Hawkeye gets too excited to stand still, but it's not the same as the way other people do it, so Hawkeye figures it's okay. And he listens when Hawkeye talks about the surgeries he reads about, even when Hawkeye can't get the words out quite right, and he's _nice_ and sometimes he's so good at being nice that some of the other kids will play with them without acting like they do when Hawkeye's just on his own. 

And right now he's laughing as Hawkeye shivers in his wet clothes and shudders at the smell that he can't get away from, still trying to catch his breath around the water that lingers in his trachea. And Hawkeye _hates him_ , just as much as he hates everyone else in this stupid place, because all of them are just the same and Hawkeye is always the odd man out and he's _sick of it_. 

(But if Hawkeye tells him that then Billy will leave, Hawkeye knows because _everyone_ leaves when he says the wrong things - which is often. Billy will leave, and then Hawkeye will be well and truly alone and there won't be anyone around with enough patience to put up with him until he can learn how to do things right, and then where will he be? He'll be alone for the rest of his life, and Hawkeye doesn't get along with people easy but he _loves_ to be around them, and he doesn't want to lose it just because he ruined things without meaning to.) 

"You're so clumsy," Billy says when Hawkeye is quiet for too long, and he's still laughing but there's something quieter in it too, and Hawkeye wishes he knew what it was (He wishes he knew what he did, he wishes he understood what happened so that he could make sure it doesn't happen again, did he do something wrong? Did he make Billy mad?). "If it weren't for me, you'd be dead." 

Hawkeye knows that if it weren't for him, there wouldn't have been a problem to begin with. The water in his lungs wouldn't have been there if it weren't for Billy, and Hawkeye hates him for acting like it was his fault when it wasn't (but what if it was?), and Hawkeye wants to yell at him, tell him that you're supposed to apologize when you hurt people, and tell him that friends aren't supposed to hurt each other in the first place. 

But Hawkeye doesn't want to be all alone again. 

"Thank you," he says instead. 

What else is there that he can say?

* * *

Hawkeye Pierce is nearly thirty years old, and he can't fucking stand the knowing. 

Sidney hadn't been wrong; the remembering had helped with the sneezing at least. There was that to cling to, but little else. 

He feels almost as if he should have expected it, he feels like an idiot for believing in his own lies for so long, he feels pathetic for letting something so small keep him from working, and he feels so full of anger and grief that he can't bear it. 

Here's the thing, it had always been obvious that Hawkeye wasn't like other people, and even when it wasn't obvious to _him_ , other people made sure he knew. Adults and children alike had the tendency to handle things in ways ranging from 'less than ideal' to 'downright cruel' and up until Tommy in grade school (after the years of practice and being taught in ways both kind and cruel that gave him a better chance at fitting in), Billy had been one of the only ones around that had treated Hawkeye like any other kid instead of like a joke or a punching bag. 

But apparently he hadn't even been that. 

Hawkeye is angry more than anything, but more than that, he's sad. Not quite for himself, but for the child he used to be - so desperate for any scrap of friendship or acceptance that he'd seen no other choice but to forget the cruelty entirely to make sure that the kindness stuck around (to make sure that he wasn't the one to ruin it, the way he ruined everything). 

He can't stand it. He feels sick with it, so beyond anger on behalf of a grieving seven year old learning for the first time that even kind people could be cruel, a child already too familiar with being alone and shunned just for the sin of being born a bit different. Someone should have known better, should have _been_ better, should have gotten over their short-sighted beliefs on behalf of a child unable to protect themself. It shouldn't have been his sick mother and grieving father undertaking a battle with an entire town to convince them to give him a chance, they should have learned to be _better_ instead of forcing Hawkeye to be different. 

Not that any of it matters now, and Hawkeye tries to hold onto that. None of it _matters_ , because Hawkeye grew up even though he never got much better at pretending he was like the others. He grew up, and he learned how to wield his strangeness like a badge of honor and how to shed the cruelty of others like water off his back, and he's not alone anymore. There's no longer a need to cling to the people who hurt him just because he didn't have any other choice, because Hawkeye has people who know how to take the good with the weird because they're all strange in their own right. 

He tries to hold onto that, even as he weeps with the pain of that seven year old, even as he rages against the decades old injustice. There's no distance from his pain yet, there was never any time to process it before he made himself forget, and now it's fresh on his lap as if it just happened. 

But it didn't. It happened a long time ago, and Hawkeye isn't that desperate child anymore, and he isn't alone. He scrounged together a family here, of people who are like him and people who aren't, but all of them are people that _care_. Hawkeye didn't grow up to be alone and estranged like he feared when he was a child, he grew up and he pulled together a family of people who saw him as he was and accepted him anyway, who love him _because_ of how he's strange instead of _despite_ it all. People who love him just as much as he loves them. 

He reminds himself, over and over again, and he'll keep doing it as many times as he needs to in order to weather this storm: he's Hawkeye Pierce and he's always been different, but he's not alone anymore. 

That's the only thing that still matters. 

**Author's Note:**

> do you ever look back at some of the shit people put you through when you were younger and get pissed on behalf of that kid who didn't know any better? whack. 
> 
> [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)


End file.
